Papers in honour of Professor Annelou van Gijn

As a former (PhD) student of the Faculty of Archaeology, your relationship with the Faculty doesn’t end when you graduate. You will join an international community of Archaeology Alumni, working in a wide range of careers including academia, commercial archaeology, heritage policy, museums, the media,…

From summer and winter schools to online workshops, explore, connect, and grow as a researcher.

For three millennia, carved sculptures were ubiquitous among ancient peoples in the Americas. Sculpted in stone, metal or wood, they developed into the well-known totem poles, colossal Olmec heads, royal Maya stelae and golden Inca statues.

Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain). Volume 7/Sessions A4b and A12

The Centre for Indigenous America Studies (CIAS) at Leiden University is designed to coordinate and promote the teaching and research of Indigenous languages, literatures, cultures and cultural heritage.

Archives were a common target during the Second World War, and hundreds suffered damages. Among these archival losses, the losses to medieval manuscript collections stand out.

World history, connectivity and material culture, edited by Martin Pitts and Miguel John Versluys. From Cambridge University Press.

The deans (chairs of the faculty boards) form the Board of Deans, which is chaired by the Rector Magnificus.

The Laboratory for Human Osteoarchaeology specialises in the macroscopic and microscopic analysis of human remains. We use cutting edge scientific approaches to address archaeological, historical, and anthropological research questions. In addition to paleopathological, histological, and 3D scanning…

The excavation of three Bronze Age barrows and surrounding landscape at Apeldoorn-Wieselseweg

As Lila Abu Lughod pointed out in 1989, North Africa has been one of the geographical ‘zones of prestige’ for the development of canonical approaches and crucial theoretical debates regarding the comparative study of Islam.

The unique geographic and temporal breadth of research at Leiden allows us to stimulate a shift from the classical Weberian mode of scholarly production that views historical development and modernization as emanating from Europe and the West to a multi-polar perspective that allows for more nuanced,…

Perception of material culture, design and digital knowledge applications

This thesis surveys the intersection of computed tomography (CT) and machine learning (ML), treating CT as an ill-posed inverse problem shaped by object properties, imaging physics, and data limitations.

Leiden is a real student city and has everything you’ll need to turn your time as a student into the time of your life.

This master’s programme explores the history of the written and printed word, publishing practices, and digital textual media.

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale…

Do you live in Egypt and have you always wondered about all the pharaonic heritage surrounding you? This spring NVIC organizes a beginner’s level, introductory course in Egyptology. In 6 richly illustrated lessons, the history of ancient Egypt will be brought to life, both chronologically as well as…

This PhD project investigates how grammatical features and lexical elaboration in Fulfulde Juguureere reflect aspects of cattle culture.

This book explores the return of six outstanding Kandyan artefacts to Sri Lanka by the Dutch government in 2023. It captures numerous reflections of the international interdisciplinary research team that investigated the provenance of these artifacts and the remarkable layered history that the research…

The scientific interest in stone sculpture has been present in the archaeological investigation of Nicaragua from the mid 19th century onward.

This page features an overview of relevant lectures, publications and conference papers.

The illicit trade in stolen cultural property is booming. Countless works of art and antiquities will be lost if we don’t do more to stop this. This is what experts warned at a Leiden Global congress at the National Museum of Antiquities.

For her research, PhD candidate Liselore Tissen put one famous painting after another through a 3D scanner. The resulting reproductions were indistinguishable from the originals. But what does this mean for our interpretation of art?

Lecture

The ability to create objects and structures with our hands has been essential to human development. This ability is something modern society is at risk of losing. Leiden archaeologists gather knowledge about ancient processes of ‘making and creating’ over the centuries, knowledge that helps our current…

This is an Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project of the Faculty of Humanities with three partners in Uzbekistan.

Neural networks have a wide range of applications. In Leiden, psychologists use them to build robot brains, whereas archaeologists use them to hunt for prehistoric graves.

The two-year programme is a challenging combination of general advanced courses, practical modules such as teaching assistance and conferences/workshops, a personal course profile, and research.

The specialisation Museum Studies focuses on the art museum and places it in an artistic, cultural, social and political context. Our courses, taught by art historians and museum experts, reflect on the latest academic debates and the latest insights from the working field.

The emergence of metalwork deposition during the Bronze Age in Northwest Europe, c. 2300-1500 BC

The international bachelor's programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology covers three years, allowing you to establish a firm foundation and specialise in topics that you find interesting.

Leiden University has been promoting studies on Latin America and the Caribbean for a long time.

An Investigation into the role of copper-alloy craft production in the early medieval economy of northwest Europe.

Leiden archaeologists investigate how people in the past impacted their environment. Together with scientists, environmental scientists, and humanities experts, they use this information to draw conclusions about the present – and show what we can learn from it for the future.

The African Studies Centre Leiden’s Research Programme for 2025-2029 is called ‘African Trajectories: Past Dependencies and New Directions’. Building on its former programme, it extends the recognition of Africa’s pivotal role in world affairs. The continent’s global significance has become increasingly…

The third project, worked on by dr. Rina Knoeff, is a synthesising project directed at studying the Leiden anatomical collections as important parts of ‘public history’. It will use the results of the other projects in order to analyse anatomical collections (their focus, significant silences, audiences,…

1) How natural cycles and activities are interconnected for building the time in one community? 2) What perceptions of Ñuu Dzaui peoples about their landscape can be connected with precolonial times?

The specialisations Art History and Museum Studies both engage in critical perspectives and in current practices and the development of a professional network. The specialisation Art History puts emphasis on the analysis of art works within a museal and curatorial context. Our courses, taught by art…

This long term project in Jordan is at the basis of many specialists’ studies and has several off-shoot projects. The project, with its many approaches, is also a framework for much teaching in Levantine Archaeology at Leiden University, especially concerning fieldwork methods, artefact studies, research…

Inaugural lecture

Cosmopolis seeks to explore the transnational and cultural dimensions of intra-Eurasian encounters through Dutch sources.

Water, Urbanism, and Sustainability in Roman Ostia